About CBW [EN]

The Central Military Library named after Marshal Józef Piłsudski was founded in June 1919 in the already independent Poland. During the Second World War, the Germans destroyed almost its entire book collection - of over the 500,000 volumes only 5,000 remained. Despite such heavy losses, the Library resumed its activity in 1945.

Nowadays, located in Warsaw at 109 Ostrobramska Street, the main library of the Polish Army is a modern institution, that owns – and still gathers – a huge and often unique collection of books about security and defence sciences and other fields like history, law, pedagogics, psychology, economy and management. Available on-line computer databases, spacious reading-rooms with updated books collections as well as qualified and efficient staff keep attracting new users to the Library.

The Central Military Library is not only an institution collecting, storing and lending books but also a meeting place for young people, combatants as well as people of civil and military environment. Scientific sessions and conferences, books promotions and history lessons take place in the Library.  The Library also produces historical documentaries.

The collection of the Library, a part of which is a national cultural heritage, consists of over 750 thousand library units divided into several sub-collections. They include books and periodicals as well as special collections with manuscripts, old prints, cartography, iconography, photographs, ex-librises, postcards and ephemera.

In order to make the collections accessible to a wider audience, the Central Military Library opened the first digital library in the Polish Armed Forces. The main aim of the Military Digital Library “Zbrojownia” is to create a common platform to present digitalized resources, scattered in various military institutions, on the Internet. The presented items are a part of the Polish Armed Forces heritage. At the same time, the departmental network for the Polish Armed Forces libraries has been launched. It serves as a platform for an exchange of information, experience and ideas among military librarians.

Last but not least, the Central Military Library also serves as the National Distribution Centre for NATO STO publications, that cooperates in this field with other NATO member states. The Central Military Library is an institution open to all users.